5 ways your cover letter can grab a recruiters attention

5 ways your cover letter can grab a recruiters attention5 ways your cover letter can grab a recruiters attentionYouve put the finishing touches on your resume, found a host of appealing job listings and are sitting down at your computer to apply. Then, you landsee it and your heart sinks.*Cues horror film music*They each require a cover letter.With so many positions in mind - all requiring unique cover letters - you may be tempted to just give up rather than wrestle with the dreaded To Whom it May Concern.Before you run screaming, heres a guideto help you navigate the cover letter writing process.Wait, does anyone still use cover letters anymore?The cover letter has fallen out of favor among some recruiters and job applicants.Forty-seven percent of those seeking positions said they didnt include a cover letter with their current or most recent job application, while just26% of recruiters said they think cover letters are crucial in their decision to hire an applicant, according tot he 2017 Job Seeker Nation Study by Jobvite (with data collected by Zogby Analytics).Still, there are plenty of jobs that require a cover letter, and you dont want to put yourself at a disadvantage by skipping it entirely. Heres what you need to knowTailor it to the job youre applying forIt can be tempting to use a one-size-fits all cover letter when applying to multiple jobs, but you should ditch the cookie-cutter approach.Instead of describing the same achievements on each cover letter, show every recruiter that you really do understand how your experience could benefit their company if youre brought on board.In your cover letter, be sure to highlight the points that speak to the desired job experience theyre seeking, and explain how what youve done directly relates to the job description.Ditch the weak introductionYou dont know how long the recruiter will be willing to read over your cover letter, so make the top of it count.So, if you had to choose between Please consider me for your sales representative opening and Your need for a top-performing sales representative is an excellent match to my three-year history as a top-ranked, multimillion-dollar producer, theres no contest, according toMonster.com.So how do you write a strong cover letter introduction?Be concrete, succinct and interesting. Give examples of your successes or personenname your contacts at the company, according toThe Balance.com.In other words, lead with your best foot forward.Dont rambleTime is of the essence when it comes to job applications, and you dont want the recruiters eyes to glaze over in an attempt to read through your letter.When it comes to the perfect length, the perfect letter is between a half a page and a page long, according toAlison Green, author ofthe blog Ask a Manager.She writes that recruiters preferences vary, but that the perfect length for a cover letter is the amount of space that it takes to explain why youre an unusually strong candidate for the job aside from whats on your resume, Green writes.Go beyond whats on your resumeRecruiters can read your bullet points, but they dont necessarily know how what you accomplished impacted your career - the cover letter is your opportunity to fill them in.The Muse explains how to dive deeper into how the achievements on your resume have shaped you professionally.Instead of just repeating yourself (I was in charge of reviewing invoice disputes), use your cover letter to describe additional details that you werent able to squeeze onto the single page of your resume By resolving invoice disputes, I gained a deep analytical knowledge - but more importantly, I learned how to interact calmly and diplomatically with angry customers. A cover letter gives you the freedom to use full sentences - instead of bullet points - so use them to expand upon your resume points and tell the story of why youre the perfect fit for the company, the publication says.Submit it as a portable document format fileYouve work ed hard to format that tab indent or bullet point layout just so - so why risk that hard work disappearing the minute your file gets converted from a .doc to a .docx on the hiring managers computer screen?Not every office computer can read .docx or .pages files, but virtually everybody can open a PDF file without any conversion,Forbes reports.File conversions are bad for two huge reasons. First, they are just as likely to not bother and move onto the next applicant. And, second, conversions can introduce formatting errors. Both are bad.